Two-Tone Black and White Glass Vide-Poche with Scroll Volutes, circa 1970

This blown glass vide-poche brings together two absolute tones with striking elegance: a deep jet-black with an almost lacquered brilliance, and an opaque white that forms two scrolled volutes arching over either side of the rim. The form — a small, low, rounded bowl — is at once simple and comfortable to handle, but it is the graphic interplay between the two colours that constitutes the true subject of the piece.

The two white glass volutes, spiralled and slightly asymmetrical as the glassblower's hand dictates, testify to a mastery of cane work and hot modelling. This type of ornamental inlay and shaping, characteristic of French art glass workshops of the 1960s and 1970s, produces effects of real visual complexity — simultaneously pictorial and sculptural in their quality.

The black-and-white contrast was a dominant aesthetic constant in the decorative arts of the 1960s and 1970s, running through furniture, fashion, ceramics and glasswork alike. This vide-poche embodies that graphic signature with notable restraint: without superfluous colour or unnecessary ornament, it draws its authority from the sole relationship between two opposing materials.

In fine condition, the glass is intact without chip or crack. An object that settles with discretion and quiet presence on a desk, a chest of drawers or a bedside table — as useful as it is beautiful.